Variation on a theme

I think it’s funny when a thought or an idea keeps appearing once it’s first recognized. Take my recent post on “Carmen and the Bull” as an example. The show synopsis that I ended up using reads thusly:

Join in the fun as a singing, dancing, traveling gypsy befriends a little bull, his mom and most unlikely of all—a bullfighter! Using the music from the opera Carmen, and loosely based on the beloved story Ferdinand the Bull,Union Avenue Opera’s education team delights young and old audiences alike with a new depiction of a timeless theme: Be True To Yourself. As it turns out, when Ferdinand is the best version of himself, good things happen to everyone involved!

I flipped open the most recent Runner’s World a day after writing about the children’s opera. Literally the first thing I saw was an ad for the new book, “To Be a Runner.” I almost laughed when I read the book description:

Dave Davies interviewed journalist and author Pete Hamill on Fresh Air yesterday, and I think I actually DID laugh out loud when Hamill replied to Davies’ question about the author’s changed drinking habits (and not, incidentally, because drinking habits are funny):

But from the professional and personal standpoint, a lot of it was about trying to find out what was there as a writer because my ambition was not to be better than Faulkner or Hemingway or anything like that. It was tobe the best version of myself that I could conceivably bein the time I had on the planet.

I guess we’re all trying to figure out how to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. A timeless theme? Yes, indeed. It’s showing up everywhere.